NVIDIA Bridges The Gap Between Mobile And PC Gaming With Tegra K1 Chip

NVIDIA has been at the forefront of gaming for years. They have been leading the way in PC gaming for as long as we can remember, and they brought mobile gaming closer than ever before to PC and console gaming with the release of the Tegra 2 dual-core chip a few years ago. They followed up the Tegra 2 with the Tegra 3(the world's first quad-core mobile processor with 12 gpu cores), and further improved upon that with the Tegra 4 quad-core chip and it's 72 GPU cores in 2013. NVIDIA has just changed the game(literally) with the unveiling of the Tegra K1, the worlds first mobile processor that houses 192 cores. With this chip NVIDIA hopes to bridge the gap between mobile gaming and PC gaming, and they just might have accomplished such a feat, but their at the very least right on track.

The computing company had teased this new mobile processor with a stunt they pulled earlier today by making a giant crop circle in the design of a massive CPU. They teased the amount of cores, by inserting the numbers 1, 9, and 2 in braille. The message may have been a little cryptic before, but the message is quite clear now what NVIDIA has planned. They want to usher mobile gaming into a new age. By integrating new elements of physics processing and advanced light and shadow elements called global illumination, which uses everything within the scenes of a game as a light source, and paired together with Epic's upcoming Unreal Engine 4, we get a glimpse of where NVIDIA wants to take mobile gaming and mobile computing in the future.

The Tegra K1 chip uses the same GPU architecture as the GeForce GTX 780 Ti GPU for PC, so we can certainly expect some amazing things to come with the computing power that the Tegra K1 chip brings to the table. During NVIDIAs press event and Twitch.TV livestream, NVIDIA shows off just how powerful their next iteration of the Tegra chip is with multiple game demos that utilize Unreal Engine 4. The next generation of graphics capability and gaming has finally made its way to mobile, and is finally at a place where mobile gaming can be on par with consoles. Tegra K1 will be available in two different versions, one chip uses a 32-bit quad-core, A15cpu, and the second version uses a custom NVIDIA designed 64-bit dual-super core CPU called Dual-Core Denver. If you're excited about games, its time to get excited about Mobile Gaming.

LAS VEGAS, NV - CES -- NVIDIA today unveiled the revolutionary Tegra® K1 mobile processor, a 192-core super chip featuring the same NVIDIA® Keplerâ„¢ architecture that powers the fastest GPU on the planet, the NVIDIA GeForce® GTXâ„¢ 780 Ti. For the first time, next-generation PC gaming will now be available on mobile platforms.

The Tegra K1 processor sets new mobile standards by supporting the latest PC-class gaming technologies, enabling it to run sophisticated gaming engines like Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. It delivers advanced computation capabilities to speed the development of applications for computer vision and speech recognition. And its extraordinary efficiency delivers higher performance than any other mobile GPU at the same power level.

"Over the past two decades, NVIDIA invented the GPU and has developed more graphics technologies than any other company," said Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO, NVIDIA. "With Tegra K1, we're bringing that heritage to mobile. It bridges the gap for developers, who can now build next-gen games and apps that will run on any device."

Tegra K1 is offered in two pin-to-pin compatible versions. The first version uses a 32-bit quad-core, 4-Plus-1â„¢ ARM Cortex A15 CPU. The second version uses a custom, NVIDIA-designed 64-bit dual Super Core CPU. This CPU (codenamed "Denver") delivers very high single-thread and multi-thread performance. It is based on the ARMv8 architecture, which brings the energy-efficient heritage of ARM processor technology to 64-bit computing.

Both versions of Tegra K1 deliver stunning graphics and visual computing capabilities powered by the 192-core NVIDIA Kepler GPU. The 32-bit version is expected in devices in the first half of 2014, while the 64-bit version is expected in devices in the second half of the year.

Simply Unreal:Setting Stunning New Gaming StandardsTegra K1 provides full support for the latest PC-class gaming technologies -- including DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.4 and tessellation. These capabilities will enable PC and console game developers to finally bring their stunning, visually rich titles to mobile devices.

Such features enable Tegra K1 to run the world's most advanced game engine, Unreal Engine 4. Unreal Engine is the most successful commercially licensed game engine, powering hundreds of games on high-end PCs and consoles.

Tegra K1 is also the first mobile processor to deliver the same graphics features as the next generation of consoles (Xbox One, PlayStation 4) and faster performance than current generation consoles (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3), all in the palm of your hand.

"With the introduction of this revolutionary processor, we can take applications that run on PC or console and run it on Tegra," said Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games and developer of Unreal Engine. "From here onward, I think we're going to see the performance and feature gap between mobile and PC high-end gaming continue to narrow to the point where the difference between the platforms really blurs."

Computationally Advanced:Delivering New Creative CapabilitiesTegra K1 is the first processor to bring advanced computational capabilities to mobile -- leveraging its advanced GPU to deliver new mobile experiences.

It is also the first mobile processor to support NVIDIA CUDA® -- the world's most pervasive parallel computing platform. Developers have downloaded CUDA more than 2 million times to create cutting-edge GPU-accelerated applications for computer vision, advanced imaging, speech recognition, video editing and more.

Stunningly Efficient: Establishing New BenchmarksIn addition to its graphics and compute capabilities, Tegra K1 delivers breakthrough efficiency. The Kepler GPU at the heart of Tegra K1 is 1.5 times more efficient than other mobile GPUs. This results in faster performance in the same power envelope and a better experience for gaming and GPU-accelerated applications.Kepler -- first introduced in desktop and notebook systems, and later brought to workstations and supercomputers -- is the world's fastest and most energy-efficient GPU architecture. Tens of millions of Kepler-based graphics cards and systems have been shipped, including the GeForce GTX 780 Ti.

"Kepler powers all 10 of the world's most energy-efficient supercomputers," said Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group. "By scaling this technology down, NVIDIA has set the new standard for what's possible in mobile devices."

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